First, I think there is some confusion here. The article is concerned with the post office using its existing legal infrastructure monopoly to greatly reduce the price on their priority services which they do not have a legal monopoly on. Priority rates and regular mail rates are supposed to be considered separate from each other. Regular mail includes both First Class and Third Class (now called Standard Class).
Second, I am not saying that there is an official subsidizing going on but that by common sense we can see that bulk mail (both standard class and pre-sorted first class) helps increase the overall income per home which in turn reduces the cost of first class mail. Here is an easy calculation:
Income per home = (cost to process mail + cost to make trip) - postage (first class mail + bulk mail).
Cost to make trip is for the most part a constant since the mailman comes whether you have no mail, one piece of mail, or a dozen pieces of mail. The only exception is if you get a lot of fan mail and the mailman has to make a special trip to your front door.
Cost to process mail on pre-sorted mail is considerably less than the cost to process regular mail.
No matter what numbers you plug into that equation the income is always higher with bulk mail included.
Are you smoking crack? You pay tax on a public bond but that is regular federal income tax when you cash it in. That money doesn't go to the postal service. You really are grasping at straws to make your post seem like it wasn't a troll.
I was not born when the act took place (missed it by 3 years) but I am intelligent enough to know the difference between public bonds and taxes. A bond is borrowing money from somebody with the idea that they can cash in the bond at some point and actually get more money back then they put in. Taxes are monies taken from me and used to support government agencies and public works.
It is very hard to come up with concrete numbers and the post office doesn't really help much but common sense can help a little here. If you don't receive any mail on a given day the post office still has to go to your house to check for outgoing mail. For the most part the route of a mailman is the same with or without mail. Bulk mail at least pays in part for the mailman to make the trip to your house.
Surely there are costs associated with bulk mail but the rules that a bulk mailer have to follow are pretty extensive from the USPS website:
In order to mail at bulk rates, you need to:
Get a mailing permit (permission to mail) and pay an annual mailing fee.
Pay postage using one of several convenient methods: precanceled stamps, postage meter, or permit imprint.
Make smart choices about the size, shape, and weight of your mailpiece.
Ensure that your addresses are accurate.
Presort the mailpieces (separate or sort your mail by ZIP Codes).
Take your mail to the post office where you hold your mailing permit.
Something still has to sort your mail. Presorted mail means that the company drops off a bundle that says zip code 90120 and from their post office it goes straight to 90210 without any further processing.
Adding a bar code just means that your letter is less likely to get lost or mishandled.
Does UPS or Fedex make daily stops to your individual mailbox everday whether or not you have mail? Can anybody legally place mail in your mailbox outside of the postal service?
Re:Share Holders
on
I, Spammer
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Reason 1 - "(5) Relevance: If the proposal relates to operations which account for less than 5 percent of the company's total assets at the end of its most recent fiscal year, and for less than 5 percent of its net earnings and gross sales for its most recent fiscal year, and is not otherwise significantly related to the company's business;"
Remember that AOL is a very small part of AOL TW and the cost of the CD's would be way less than 5%.
Reason 2 - "(7) Management functions: If the proposal deals with a matter relating to the company's ordinary business operations;"
I think deciding on advertising methods falls under the "ordinary business operations."
Re:are you kidding?
on
I, Spammer
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Junk mail is usually paid for using bulk pricing systems, subsidized by the rest of the postal audience.
I'm afraid you have it backwards. Bulk mail, even at its reduced rate, is what allows you to send a letter at 39 cents. Bulk mail is presorted so as to make processing time for the post office almost nothing. Your letter with sloppily written address actually takes time to be read and sorted.
ALso, the USPS is a government sponsored monopoly but it doesn't receive any tax payer dollars. It is self funding.
Finally, large glossy catalogs are very expensive for companies and they are not typically sent to people who haven't shopped in the store before or requested the catalog specifically. They therefore are not in the same category as snail spam.
I think you are referring to barratry which is "The offense of persistently instigating lawsuits, typically groundless ones." I don't see this as being the case here at all.
For legal purposes a company can be considered the inventor. There is not assigning of a patent. If you are an employee of the company and you come up with a patent while on company time then it is the patent of the company. No contracts are needed.
The first two are moot. Patents are not Copyrights. The company that files is the company that gets it. It doesn't matter who created it within a company.
For 3 and 4 I suggest reading the actual patent and making a determination.
I am not sure how number 5 applies to anything in this discussion. Lawyers and judges don't grant patents - patent clerks do. Lawyers and judges can be called upon in a dispute to determine whether a patent is valid or not but otherwise they have no influence.
The patent is for a system "that overcomes the shortcomings of existing domain name searching techniques by performing a multitude of searches simultaneously, transparent to the user."
This is for a specific method of retrieving domain name information and formatting it for the end user. If anybody actually knew how to read at the Register they would see that their simple script would not violate the patent as it is written.
That's a good one too but the Swedish furniture line had special meaning at the time for me since my girlfriend and I seemed to be spending every other weekend at Ikea furnishing our new apartment. Thankfully we have bought a house that is far, far, far away from the nearest swedish meatball dispenser.
Harrison Ford as Jack Ryan vs Alec Baldwin. Sean Connery as James Bond vs Anybody Else. Those are two big ones that come quickly to mind. I am not counting stuff like Michael Keaton being a better Batman than Adam West or the entire cast of MASH the TV show being better than the entire cast of MASH the movie.
It can be whatever you want it to be. No one is forcing you to study and understand the deeper meanings. That is the beauty of the movie. It is fun to watch and it has deeper meaning. The same could said of a movie like Fight Club. Get past the brutal fight scenes and actually listen to what Tyler Durden is saying. My personal favorite - "Deliver me from Swedish furniture."
Who are you to judge what is a valid case and what isn't? If you read anything about the McDonald's case you would know that the coffee was actually at 180-190 degrees and she received 3rd degree burns over 16% of her body! Over 700 people were burned by McDonald's coffee over a ten year period and McDonald's was well aware of the risk of heating the coffee to that temperature. I recommend you check this site out.
As for this case - the domain was stolen and Network Solutions would not give back the site without a court order so it had to go to court. The decision on the case awarded the site back to the original owner along with $65MM in damages with $25MM of those being punitive. Now if you lost a case for $65MM would you not try to appeal it? I know I would. It is up to the appeals court to determine whether the case has merit or not. If they decided it does then they hear it and the public pays the cost. If they don't hear it then that's it.
I think perhaps you don't understand what you are talking about and instead like to throw around kneejerk Anti-American sentiments.
Frivolous? You wouldn't say that if it was your website that was stolen. Also, the court costs are the same whether he paid $65MM or $10. The case had to be tried because he stole the guys site. And if you believe that people are not entitled to appeal a court decision no matter what the cost then you are far deluded than I thought.
Can you provide any reason why it can't be trademarked? Not only can he trademark it but if he can prove that he used it obviously and consistently as a mark before he for at least 5 years before he registered it then he might actually have a case. Here is some info from the USPTO.
Thus, the alleged crime or civil wrong relevant to the case against Mr Uy would be harassment, wouldn't it, rather than an infringment of Mr Moore's constitutional right to privacy?!
Which has absolutely nothing to do with his posting the address on the website. If Mr. Uy made harrasing phone calls or places real threats or suggestion of threats on his site then he may be guilty of harrasment. The issue here is whether or not he has the legal right to simply post somebody else's address on his site and identify them as a spammer which is all about the 1st Amendment.
Most, if not all, of that information is already freely available on the internet. All of that information is also available in a million other places for the asking. You could even look up how much I paid for my house in the tax records. Would it be any different if instead of posting the exact address he just said "the blue house on such-and-such street between avenue a and avenue b?"
You can't apply a double standard anywhere or the whole system breaks down.
But what law says that your business address and phone number should be absolutely private? Just because it is also your home address and phone number should have no impact. Either way, freedom of speech trumps freedom of privacy. It is mentioned specifically in the Constitution wheras privacy is only hinted at.
I totally agree. Jake Gyllenhaal is ten times the actor of Tobey Maguire. When my girlfriend and I watched Spiderman the first time it was right after watching the Good Girl and we immediately said that he would have been a better casting. I think having a slighlty darker Spiderman would improve the series.
Slashdot Mirror
First, I think there is some confusion here. The article is concerned with the post office using its existing legal infrastructure monopoly to greatly reduce the price on their priority services which they do not have a legal monopoly on. Priority rates and regular mail rates are supposed to be considered separate from each other. Regular mail includes both First Class and Third Class (now called Standard Class).
Second, I am not saying that there is an official subsidizing going on but that by common sense we can see that bulk mail (both standard class and pre-sorted first class) helps increase the overall income per home which in turn reduces the cost of first class mail. Here is an easy calculation:
Income per home = (cost to process mail + cost to make trip) - postage (first class mail + bulk mail).
Cost to make trip is for the most part a constant since the mailman comes whether you have no mail, one piece of mail, or a dozen pieces of mail. The only exception is if you get a lot of fan mail and the mailman has to make a special trip to your front door.
Cost to process mail on pre-sorted mail is considerably less than the cost to process regular mail.
No matter what numbers you plug into that equation the income is always higher with bulk mail included.
Are you smoking crack? You pay tax on a public bond but that is regular federal income tax when you cash it in. That money doesn't go to the postal service. You really are grasping at straws to make your post seem like it wasn't a troll.
Read my post below about the regulations.
I was not born when the act took place (missed it by 3 years) but I am intelligent enough to know the difference between public bonds and taxes. A bond is borrowing money from somebody with the idea that they can cash in the bond at some point and actually get more money back then they put in. Taxes are monies taken from me and used to support government agencies and public works.
I can see why you posted as AC.
It is very hard to come up with concrete numbers and the post office doesn't really help much but common sense can help a little here. If you don't receive any mail on a given day the post office still has to go to your house to check for outgoing mail. For the most part the route of a mailman is the same with or without mail. Bulk mail at least pays in part for the mailman to make the trip to your house.
Surely there are costs associated with bulk mail but the rules that a bulk mailer have to follow are pretty extensive from the USPS website:
In order to mail at bulk rates, you need to:
Get a mailing permit (permission to mail) and pay an annual mailing fee.
Pay postage using one of several convenient methods: precanceled stamps, postage meter, or permit imprint.
Make smart choices about the size, shape, and weight of your mailpiece.
Ensure that your addresses are accurate.
Presort the mailpieces (separate or sort your mail by ZIP Codes).
Take your mail to the post office where you hold your mailing permit.
Something still has to sort your mail. Presorted mail means that the company drops off a bundle that says zip code 90120 and from their post office it goes straight to 90210 without any further processing.
Adding a bar code just means that your letter is less likely to get lost or mishandled.
Does UPS or Fedex make daily stops to your individual mailbox everday whether or not you have mail? Can anybody legally place mail in your mailbox outside of the postal service?
I refer you to rule 14a-8 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. There are (at least) 2 reasons why your proposal would be excluded (see question 9).
Reason 1 - "(5) Relevance: If the proposal relates to operations which account for less than 5 percent of the company's total assets at the end of its most recent fiscal year, and for less than 5 percent of its net earnings and gross sales for its most recent fiscal year, and is not otherwise significantly related to the company's business;"
Remember that AOL is a very small part of AOL TW and the cost of the CD's would be way less than 5%.
Reason 2 - "(7) Management functions: If the proposal deals with a matter relating to the company's ordinary business operations;"
I think deciding on advertising methods falls under the "ordinary business operations."
Junk mail is usually paid for using bulk pricing systems, subsidized by the rest of the postal audience.
I'm afraid you have it backwards. Bulk mail, even at its reduced rate, is what allows you to send a letter at 39 cents. Bulk mail is presorted so as to make processing time for the post office almost nothing. Your letter with sloppily written address actually takes time to be read and sorted.
ALso, the USPS is a government sponsored monopoly but it doesn't receive any tax payer dollars. It is self funding.
Finally, large glossy catalogs are very expensive for companies and they are not typically sent to people who haven't shopped in the store before or requested the catalog specifically. They therefore are not in the same category as snail spam.
I think you are referring to barratry which is "The offense of persistently instigating lawsuits, typically groundless ones." I don't see this as being the case here at all.
For legal purposes a company can be considered the inventor. There is not assigning of a patent. If you are an employee of the company and you come up with a patent while on company time then it is the patent of the company. No contracts are needed.
The first two are moot. Patents are not Copyrights. The company that files is the company that gets it. It doesn't matter who created it within a company.
For 3 and 4 I suggest reading the actual patent and making a determination.
I am not sure how number 5 applies to anything in this discussion. Lawyers and judges don't grant patents - patent clerks do. Lawyers and judges can be called upon in a dispute to determine whether a patent is valid or not but otherwise they have no influence.
The patent is for a system "that overcomes the shortcomings of existing domain name searching techniques by performing a multitude of searches simultaneously, transparent to the user."
This is for a specific method of retrieving domain name information and formatting it for the end user. If anybody actually knew how to read at the Register they would see that their simple script would not violate the patent as it is written.
That's a good one too but the Swedish furniture line had special meaning at the time for me since my girlfriend and I seemed to be spending every other weekend at Ikea furnishing our new apartment. Thankfully we have bought a house that is far, far, far away from the nearest swedish meatball dispenser.
Harrison Ford as Jack Ryan vs Alec Baldwin. Sean Connery as James Bond vs Anybody Else. Those are two big ones that come quickly to mind. I am not counting stuff like Michael Keaton being a better Batman than Adam West or the entire cast of MASH the TV show being better than the entire cast of MASH the movie.
It can be whatever you want it to be. No one is forcing you to study and understand the deeper meanings. That is the beauty of the movie. It is fun to watch and it has deeper meaning. The same could said of a movie like Fight Club. Get past the brutal fight scenes and actually listen to what Tyler Durden is saying. My personal favorite - "Deliver me from Swedish furniture."
Who are you to judge what is a valid case and what isn't? If you read anything about the McDonald's case you would know that the coffee was actually at 180-190 degrees and she received 3rd degree burns over 16% of her body! Over 700 people were burned by McDonald's coffee over a ten year period and McDonald's was well aware of the risk of heating the coffee to that temperature. I recommend you check this site out.
As for this case - the domain was stolen and Network Solutions would not give back the site without a court order so it had to go to court. The decision on the case awarded the site back to the original owner along with $65MM in damages with $25MM of those being punitive. Now if you lost a case for $65MM would you not try to appeal it? I know I would. It is up to the appeals court to determine whether the case has merit or not. If they decided it does then they hear it and the public pays the cost. If they don't hear it then that's it.
I think perhaps you don't understand what you are talking about and instead like to throw around kneejerk Anti-American sentiments.
Frivolous? You wouldn't say that if it was your website that was stolen. Also, the court costs are the same whether he paid $65MM or $10. The case had to be tried because he stole the guys site. And if you believe that people are not entitled to appeal a court decision no matter what the cost then you are far deluded than I thought.
If you dedicated your site to selling sports equipment, whether wilson equipment or not, you sure as hell would be violating their trademark.
Can you provide any reason why it can't be trademarked? Not only can he trademark it but if he can prove that he used it obviously and consistently as a mark before he for at least 5 years before he registered it then he might actually have a case. Here is some info from the USPTO.
Thus, the alleged crime or civil wrong relevant to the case against Mr Uy would be harassment, wouldn't it, rather than an infringment of Mr Moore's constitutional right to privacy?!
Which has absolutely nothing to do with his posting the address on the website. If Mr. Uy made harrasing phone calls or places real threats or suggestion of threats on his site then he may be guilty of harrasment. The issue here is whether or not he has the legal right to simply post somebody else's address on his site and identify them as a spammer which is all about the 1st Amendment.
Most, if not all, of that information is already freely available on the internet. All of that information is also available in a million other places for the asking. You could even look up how much I paid for my house in the tax records. Would it be any different if instead of posting the exact address he just said "the blue house on such-and-such street between avenue a and avenue b?"
You can't apply a double standard anywhere or the whole system breaks down.
But what law says that your business address and phone number should be absolutely private? Just because it is also your home address and phone number should have no impact. Either way, freedom of speech trumps freedom of privacy. It is mentioned specifically in the Constitution wheras privacy is only hinted at.
I totally agree. Jake Gyllenhaal is ten times the actor of Tobey Maguire. When my girlfriend and I watched Spiderman the first time it was right after watching the Good Girl and we immediately said that he would have been a better casting. I think having a slighlty darker Spiderman would improve the series.
I don't know about selling Marijuana but members of the Hezbollah have been known to smuggle cigarettes from low tax states to high tax states. Cells like these pretty much deal in whatever trade they can (illegal or not) to earn money for their cause. I wouldn't doubt that they grow and sell marijuana, too.